Very quick morning meeting today so I took a bunch of old sketches and tried to collage them together though somewhat unsuccessfully I feel. Not enough time to really bring them together into a cohesive piece but there's a seed of something in there at least.

The beautiful photography of Don Hong-Oai on the other hand manages to do much more. The border between photography and traditional Chinese painting blurs to the point of nonexistence in his gorgeous photography. I've always been a big fan of block prints and traditional Asian painting such as ukiyo-e and sumi-e in Japan. The strength of such pieces' elegant and beautiful compositions with subtle color is the ultimate example of creating using the minimal number of elements for maximum effect, the greatest challenge in any discipline of creation.

As much as I love working in web, its sad to see a lot of sites repeat the same style and interactive elements. When I see yet another site dependent on rounded corners, tabs, folded headers or any of the other "trending" web elements I may just hit the back button immediately. So it's nice to see a site like Kinetic Energy's, a creative agency from Singapore. The Victorian-era circus pamphlet style is certainly unique. However the same can't be said for the animated scroll events though they have a few clever ones (beware this sight has sound by default and its quite...unique). Sadly, as with many sites of this ilk, the disjointed copy and font use make it hard to get a feel for what the site's actually about. However from a visual level, it is is truly fascinating.

As always, video was the hardest selection for this week. Should I try to make you laugh? Maybe I should make an effort to inspire? Or maybe just give you something to sing along with? However at the end of the day this little gem that I've seen passed along by a variety of friends takes the cake, especially since I'm planning on going to said event this year with my sister.

The short made me realize that Burning Man is, at its core, a Dr. Seuss book come to life for adults; a place where individuality rules over all and the surreal imagination of participants takes living form in an isolated desert, if only for a week. Hope to see you all there!

The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin during our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.